Digital Commons Network^™

After Mccleskey, Robert L. Tsai

Faculty Scholarship

In the 1987 decision, McCleskey v. Kemp, the Supreme Court rejected a black death row inmate's argument that significant racial disparities in the administration of Georgia's capital punishment laws violated the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. In brushing aside the most sophisticated empirical study of a state 's capital practices to date, that ruling seemingly slammed the door on structural inequality claims against the criminal justice system. Most accounts of the case end after noting the ruling's incompatibility with more robust theories of equality and meditating on the deep sense of demoralization felt by social justice advocates. One might …

Femtechnodystopia, Leah R. Fowler, Michael Ulrich

Faculty Scholarship

Reproductive rights, as we have long understood them, are dead. But at the same time history seems to be moving backward, technology moves relentlessly forward. Femtech products, a category of consumer technology addressing an array of “female” health needs, seem poised to fill gaps created by states and stakeholders eager to limit birth control and abortion access and increase pregnancy surveillance and fetal rights. Period and fertility tracking applications could supplement or replace other contraception. Early digital alerts to missed periods can improve the chances of obtaining a legal abortion in states with ever-shrinking windows of availability or prompt behavioral …

Inhibition Of Wnt/Β‐Catenin Pathway Overcomes Therapeutic Resistance To Abiraterone In Castration‐Resistant Prostate Cancer, Ibrahim M. Atawia, Prem P. Kushwaha, Shiv Verma, Spencer Lin, Eswar Shankar, Sanjay Gupta

Faculty Scholarship

Abiraterone acetate has been clinically approved for the treatment of patients with advanced‐stage prostate cancer. It reduces testosterone production by blocking the enzyme cytochrome P450 17 alpha‐hydroxylase. Despite improved survival outcomes with abiraterone, almost all patients develop therapeutic resistance and disease recurrence, progressing to a more aggressive and lethal phenotype. Bioinformatics analyses predicted activation of canonical Wnt/β‐catenin and involvement of stem cell plasticity in abiraterone‐resistant prostate cancer. Increased expression of androgen receptor (AR) and β‐catenin and their crosstalk causes activation of AR target genes and regulatory networks for which overcoming acquired resistance remains a major challenge. Here we show that …

Glucose-Dependent Insulinotropic Polypeptide Monoclonal Antibodies Prevent And Treat Obesity In Wild-Type And Hyperphagic Mice, M Michael Wolfe, Michael O. Boylan

Faculty Scholarship

Objective: This study aimed to investigate whether a glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP) monoclonal antibody (mAb) will promote weight loss in wild-type mice and to determine effects of this mAb in preventing weight gain in ob/ob mice. Methods: Phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) or GIP mAb was injected intraperitoneally to wild-type mice fed a 60% high-fat diet (HFD). After 12 weeks, mice that received PBS were divided into two groups and were fed a 37% HFD for 5 weeks; one group received PBS, and one group received GIP mAb. In a separate study, PBS or GIP mAb was injected intraperitoneally to ob/ob mice …

Monitoring American Federalism: The Overlooked Tool Of Sounding The Alarm Interposition, Christian G. Fritz

Faculty Scholarship

One key feature of the U.S. Constitution – the concept of federalism – was unclear when it was introduced, and that lack of clarity threatened the Constitution’s ratification by those who feared the new government would undermine state sovereignty. Proponents of the new governmental framework were questioned about the underlying theory of the Constitution as well as how it would operate in practice, and their explanations produced intense and extended debate over how to monitor federalism.

http://50shadesoffederalism.com/case-studies/monitoring-american-federalism-the-overlooked-tool-of-sounding-the-alarm-interposition/#more-1574

Inpatient Epidemiology, Healthcare Utilization, And Association With Comorbidities Of Turner Syndrome: A National Inpatient Sample Study, Jirat Chenbhanich

Faculty Scholarship

We aimed to investigate the prevalence, resource utilization, and comorbidities of patients with Turner syndrome (TS) hospitalized in the United States. We identified patients within the Nationwide Inpatient Sample database from the year 2017 to 2019. A propensity-matched cohort of non-TS patients from the same database was constructed to serve as comparators. There were 9845 TS patients, corresponding to inpatient prevalence of 10.4 per 100,000 admissions. The most common admission diagnosis was sepsis (27.9%). TS patients had higher inpatient mortality (adjusted odds ratio 2.16, 95% confidence interval 1.57–2.96) and morbidity, including shock, ICU admission, acute kidney injury, systemic inflammatory response …

Grid Governance In The Energy-Trilemma Era: Remedying The Democracy Deficit, Daniel E. Walters, Andrew N. Kleit

Faculty Scholarship

Transforming the electric power grid is central to any viable scenario for addressing global climate change, but the process and politics of this transformation are complex. The desire to transform the grid creates an “energy trilemma” involving often conflicting desires for reliability, cost, and decarbonization; and, at least in the short run, it is difficult to avoid making tradeoffs between these different goals. It is somewhat shocking, then, that many crucial decisions about electric power service in the United States are made not by consumers or their utilities, nor by state public utilities commissions or federal regulators. Instead, for much …

Mass E-Carceration: Electronic Monitoring As A Bail Condition, Sara Zampierin

Faculty Scholarship

Over the past decade, the immigration and criminal legal systems have increasingly relied on electronic monitoring as a bail condition; hundreds of thousands of people live under this monitoring on any given day. Decisionmakers purport to impose these conditions to release more individuals from detention and to maintain control over individuals they perceive to pose some risk of flight or to public safety. But the data do not show that electronic monitoring successfully mitigates these risks or that it leads to fewer individuals in detention. Electronic monitoring also comes with severe restrictions on individual liberty and leads to harmful effects …

Fishing And Fisheries Under International Water Law: A Dialogue Between Professor Gabriel Eckstein And Professor Paul Stanton Kibel, Gabriel Eckstein, Paul Stanton Kibel

Faculty Scholarship

On April 10 and 11, 2023, the Center on Urban Environmental Law (CUEL) at Golden Gate University School of Law hosted a two-day webinar on International Law Aspects of Fisheries and Hydropower in Europe. To open the webinar, Professor Gabriel Eckstein (of Texas A&M University School of Law) and Professor Paul Stanton Kibel (of Golden Gate University School of Law) participated in a keynote dialogue titled Fishing and Fisheries under International Water Law. What follows is a transcription of this dialogue between Professor Eckstein and Professor Kibel.

The Intersection Of Nfts And Structured Finance, Christopher K. Odinet, Andrea Tosato

Faculty Scholarship

Blockchain technology, cryptocurrencies, stablecoins and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) continue to invade financial markets. Whether through partnerships between financial institutions and tech firms or through in-house initiatives at some of the nation’s largest banks, blockchain-based products, services, and transactional structures are a major point of interest. In a recent work by Professor Steven Schwarcz, the growing NFT market is analyzed using the traditional tools of structured finance. Creating a new conceptual model called non-cash-flow monetizations, Professor Schwarcz reveals the risks to investors and markets, if the tokenization of non-traditional and largely illiquid assets proliferates. Having identified the potential harms, he offers …

The Common Law Inside Social Media, Anita Bernstein

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Diverse Patients’ Attitudes Towards Artificial Intelligence (Ai) In Diagnosis, Christopher Robertson, Andrew Woods, Kelly Bergstrand, Jessica Findley, Cayley Balser, Marvin J. Slepian

Faculty Scholarship

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to improve diagnostic accuracy. Yet people are often reluctant to trust automated systems, and some patient populations may be particularly distrusting. We sought to determine how diverse patient populations feel about the use of AI diagnostic tools, and whether framing and informing the choice affects uptake. To construct and pretest our materials, we conducted structured interviews with a diverse set of actual patients. We then conducted a pre-registered (osf.io/9y26x), randomized, blinded survey experiment in factorial design. A survey firm provided n = 2675 responses, oversampling minoritized populations. Clinical vignettes were randomly manipulated in eight …

The Public Stakes Of Consumer Law: The Environment, The Economy, Health, Disinformation, And Beyond, Rory Van Loo

Faculty Scholarship

This Article shows how consumer law, a field “derided as the law of small problems,”⁴ is more accurately viewed as important for addressing large-scale societal threats. It also offers a more integrated conceptual and institutional approach to consumer law so that the field can have a better chance of fulfilling its societal potential.

Part I of this Article outlines the importance of consumer law. It maps consumer law’s connections to some of the most pressing societal threats: climate change, public health, inequality, and disinformation. Part II focuses on consumer law’s place in the legal academy and government. Currently, important …

A More Perfect Union For Whom?, Emmanuel Hiram Arnaud

Faculty Scholarship

Amending the federal Constitution has been instrumental in creating and developing the North American constitutional project. The difficult process embedded in Article V has been used by “The People” to expand rights and democracy, fix procedural deficiencies, and even overturn Supreme Court precedent. Yet, it is no secret that the amendment process has fallen to the wayside and that a constitutional amendment in our present age of extreme political polarization feels impossible.

Our nation’s history suggests otherwise. In John F. Kowal and Wilfred U. Codrington III’s exciting and inspirational new book, they explain that interest in constitutional amendments has coincided …

The Role Of Primary Care In Improving Population Health, Kurt C. Stange

Faculty Scholarship

In widely quoted ecological analyses, primary care is associated with population health. Not only with population health, but with health equity, health care quality, and lower health care expenditure - a pretty good definition of value. Yet, there is a paradox about primary care. Despite these desirable population‐level attributes, at the disease level at which we typically measure, incentivize, and organize the work of health care, when assessed with one‐disease‐at‐a‐time quality measures, primary care does not perform as well as care focused on a single disease. What is going on here? In caring for patients’ individual diseases, primary care appears …

Preoperative Frailty And Adverse Outcomes Following Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting Surgery In Us Veterans, Salil V. Deo, Yakov Elgudin

Faculty Scholarship

Background: Contemporary guidelines emphasize the value of incorporating frailty into clinical decision-making regarding revascularization strategies for coronary artery disease. Yet, there are limited data describing the association between frailty and longer-term mortality among coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) patients. Methods: We conducted a retrospective cohort study (2016–2020, 40 VA medical centers) of US veterans nationwide that underwent coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG). Frailty was quantified by the Veterans Administration Frailty Index (VA-FI), which applies the cumulative deficit method to render a proportion of 30 pertinent diagnosis codes. Patients were classified as non-frail (VA-FI ≤ 0.1), pre-frail (0.1 < VA-FI ≤ 0.2), or frail (VA-FI > 0.2). We used …

A Cross-Sectional Examination Of Wrist Wrap Use Prevalence And Characterization For Ergogenic Purposes In Actively Competing Powerlifters, Dillon Harris, Thomas Cardaci, Harry Cintineo, Richard Pham, Kristen Dunsmore, Leslee Funderburk, Steven Machek

Faculty Scholarship

Purpose: Wrist wraps are regularly incorporated by competitive powerlifters, but several product-specific variations may influence any potential ergogenic benefits. In addition, the prevalence of athletic wrist wrap use is hitherto undescribed.

Methods: Seventy actively competing powerlifters (n=70; 27±6y) who competed in the last two years were randomly recruited at sanctioned meets, whereby wrist wrap use descriptive data (wrap style [F or S], wrap length, and events used), wrap tightness (assessed via pulse oximeter-detected oxygen saturation (SpO2) and subjective discomfort [Borg CR10+]), as well as post-meet bench press one repetition maximum (1RM) were collected. Wrist wrap use prevalence data (wrap …

Cold Gas Disks In Main-Sequence Galaxies At Cosmic Noon: Low Turbulence, Flat Rotation Curves, And Disk-Halo Degeneracy, Stacy S. Mcgaugh

Faculty Scholarship

We study the dynamics of cold molecular gas in two main-sequence galaxies at cosmic noon (zC-488879 at z ≃ 1.47 and zC-400569 at z ≃ 2.24) using new high-resolution ALMA observations of multiple 12CO transitions. For zC-400569 we also reanalyze high-quality Hα data from the SINS/zC-SINF survey. We find that (1) both galaxies have regularly rotating CO disks and their rotation curves are flat out to ∼8 kpc contrary to previous results pointing to outer declines in the rotation speed Vrot; (2) the intrinsic velocity dispersions are low (σCO ≲ 15 km s-1 for CO and σHα ≲ 37 km …

Congressional Meddling In Presidential Elections: Still Unconstitutional After All These Years; A Comment On Sunstein, Gary S. Lawson, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

In a prior article, see Jack Beermann & Gary Lawson, The Electoral Count Mess: The Electoral Count Act of 1887 Is Unconstitutional, and Other Fun Facts (Plus a Few Random Academic Speculations) about Counting Electoral Votes, 16 FIU L. REV. 297 (2022), we argued that much of the 1877 Electoral Count Act unconstitutionally gave Congress a role in counting and certifying electoral votes. In 2022, Congress amended the statute to make it marginally more constitutional in some respects and significantly less constitutional in others. In response to a forthcoming article by Cass Sunstein defending the new Electoral Count …

Utilizing Neurodiverse Workplace Strategies To Support The Growing Population Of Long Covid Cases In A Neuroinclusive Workplace: A Paradigm Shift For Neuroacquired Employees, Piper Hutson, James Hutson

Faculty Scholarship

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to the emergence of long COVID, a condition in which patients report persistent symptoms after recovering from acute SARS-CoV-2 infection. A review conducted by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) suggests that long COVID may actually consist of four different syndromes: post-intensive care syndrome, post-viral fatigue syndrome, and long-term COVID syndrome. The absence of a clear definition for this condition may lead to under-recognition and under-treatment of the symptoms experienced by those affected. Moreover, existing programs designed for neuro diverse individuals may be adapted to support the growing neuro acquired population. Communication strategies, such …

Racial Equality Compromises, Yuvraj Joshi

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Midas Touch: Atuahene's "Stategraft" And Unregulated Artificial Intelligence, Sonia Gipson Rankin

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Bernadette Atuahene’s article, A Theory of Stategraft, develops the new theoretical conception of “stategraft.” Professor Atuahene notes that when state agents have engaged in practices of transferring property from persons to the state in violation of the state’s own laws or basic human rights, it sits at the nexus of illegal behavior and revenue-generating activity for the government. Although there are countless instances of “stategraft,” one particularly salient example is when the state uses artificial intelligence to illegally extract resources from people. This Essay will apply stategraft to an algorithm implemented in Michigan that falsely accused recipients of unemployment …

Less Is More?: Accountability For White-Collar Offenses Through An Abolitionist Framework, Pedro Gerson

Faculty Scholarship

White-collar crime is underenforced: not enough cases are brought, not many convictions are secured, and when they are, those who were convicted usually benefit from leniency not seen in other kinds of criminal wrongdoing. Calls for accountability center on strengthening the traditional tools of criminal law enforcement to reach actors that have so far eluded criminal liability. These responses, however, risk further entrenching the systems that have led the United States to mass incarceration and its many real and tangible harms. In this Article, I question whether an abolitionist framework is possible for white-collar crime. First, I argue that given …

The Poetry Of Prompts: The Collaborative Role Of Generative Artificial Intelligence In The Creation Of Poetry And The Anxiety Of Machine Influence, James Hutson, Ana Schnellmann

Faculty Scholarship

2022 has been heralded as the year of generative artificial intelligence (AI). Generative AI like ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion, along with a host of others, launched late in the year and immediately disrupted the status quo of the literary and art worlds, leading to outcries to ban “AI Art” and spawning an entirely new market of NFTs. Fears over the “death of the artist” and the “death of college composition,” however, are unfounded when considering the historical adoption of emerging technologies by creatives and the reconsideration of authorship that began with post structuralism and the Foucauldian Death of the Author …

The Case Against The Debt Tax, Vijay Raghavan

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

If We Build It, Will They Legislate? Empirically Testing The Potential Of The Nondelegation Doctrine To Curb Congressional "Abdication", Daniel E. Walters, Elliott Ash

Faculty Scholarship

A widely held view for why the Supreme Court would be right to revive the nondelegation doctrine is that Congress has perverse incentives to abdicate its legislative role and evade accountability through the use of delegations, either expressly delineated or implied through statutory imprecision, and that enforcement of the nondelegation doctrine would correct for those incentives. We call this the Field of Dreams Theory—if we build the nondelegation doctrine, Congress will legislate. Unlike originalist arguments for the revival of the nondelegation doctrine, this theory has widespread appeal and is instrumental to the Court’s project of gaining popular acceptance of a …

The Article Iii "Party" And The Originalist Case Against Corporate Diversity Jurisdiction, Mark Moller, Lawrence B. Solum

Faculty Scholarship

Federal courts control an outsize share of big-ticket corporate litigation. And that control rests, to a significant degree, on the Supreme Court’s extension of Article III’s Diversity of Citizenship Clause to corporations. Yet, critics have questioned the constitutionality of corporate diversity jurisdiction from the beginning.

In this Article and a previous one, we develop the first sustained critique of corporate diversity jurisdiction.

Our previous article demonstrated that corporations are not “citizens” given the original meaning of that word. But we noted this finding alone doesn’t sink general corporate diversity jurisdiction. The ranks of corporate shareholders include many undoubted “citizens.” And …

Stories From The Negative Spaces: United States V. Thind And The Narrative Of (Non)Whiteness, Joy Kanwar

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Surviving Castro-Huerta: The Historical Perseverance Of The Basic Policy Of Worcester V. Georgia Protecting Tribal Autonomy, Notwithstanding One Supreme Court Opinion's Errant Narrative To The Contrary, John P. Lavelle

Faculty Scholarship

Oklahoma v. Castro‑Huerta is an unprecedented attack on the autonomy of Native American nations in the United States. The Supreme Court held that Oklahoma had jurisdiction over a crime committed by a non‑Indian perpetrator against an Indian victim within the Cherokee Reservation’s boundaries. The decision posits that states presumptively have jurisdiction, concurrent with the federal government, over crimes by non‑Indians against Indians in Indian country. But this proposition is at war with a bedrock principle of Indian law, namely, that reservations are essentially “free from state jurisdiction and control,” a policy that “is deeply rooted in the Nation’s history.” That …

The Accountable Bureaucrat, Anya Bernstein, Cristina Rodriguez

Faculty Scholarship

Common wisdom has it that bureaucrats are unaccountable to the people they regulate and must therefore be closely supervised by elected officials or (perhaps ironically) the federal courts. For many detractors of the administrative state, as well as many proponents, agency accountability hangs on the concentrated power of the President in particular. This Article presents a different vision. Drawing on in-depth interviews with officials from numerous agencies, we show that everyday administrative practices and relationships themselves support accountability of a kind that neither elections nor judicial review alone can achieve.

Our interviews reveal that agency officials work within structures that …